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Taking AAs into our own hands

As many of you have seen in chat, we have decided to stop asking edge for a fix to “boring” AAs and implement something ourselves. Lama had suggested this multiple time in the past, but i do not think certain alliance leaders could get away from “flank flank flank!” and “gotta be #1 at all costs”. From responses I have seen so far, many people are on board with this and I’d like to not talk about it for weeks and do nothing. I say we come up with something, make some changes and see what happens. if we have to adjust fire, we can do so.
Here’s the basic idea. we shuffle some deck around to make the top 10 alliances or so viable to attack each other and win. its NEVER going to be perfect, but there will be no clear cut #1 AND all “top” alliances will be substantially weaker, which will allow even more alliances to break into the top 10ish and participate. it seems win/win to me except for the 1% of players who cant think about anything other than being #1.
maki’s suggestion was each alliance leader stays and pick 2 “core” alliance members that define their alliance…everybody else is fair game to be moved.
My next suggestion was lower alliance picks who they want and who they will give and alliance leaders simply make it happen. we all wake up tomorrow where we are and start fighting. no hard feelings…noone got kicked into a “weaker” alliance…all alliances are ~equal
I personally would go anywhere if we are all going to end up even and fight each other everyday instead of attacking some #28 alliance and going 176-0.
Open to suggestions. My only wish is that we make this happen. NOW. not a month from now. we all say repeatedly that it takes edge forever to make a switch and blah blah, so lets not be hypocrites. let’s agree on something, do it and make some changes/have some fun
Earl

Let me add, there are 9 decks in Grim that have been there for over 4 months. Is it going to be painful to drop 4-5 of them and face them in chat and have them be not so happy with me? yes. but it’s necessary. for 100 of us that spend way too much time…and way too much money here. and it’s long overdue.

From what I can tell Pickers and GRIM have all top quality decks, but GRIM has less decks. Teams ranked 3-6 have about 25-50% top quality decks. Teams 7-10 has one or two top quality decks. So a quick way to even things out would be for most GRIM and Pickers to swap out with the 7-10 seeded teams. From there we can make adjustments as needed.
If we do go for the entire team shakeup, I think the best way to do it would be have a draft, or at least some kind of committee figuring out what the teams should be to be fair.

this is never going to be perfect. and some people will not wish to participate and there may even be an alliance that is “#1 hungry” like we used to be and will use this to take first and then brag in chat about it all day. i don’t care. if pickers and grim lose a few solid decks and a cpl other alliances pick up a cpl strong decks and we at least have SOME semblance of fairness/fun, it will just be better all the way around. I’m not scared to lose. or be 2nd, or 7th. if we are having fun.
And if some alliance wants to become “all powerful” and start trolling us that are trying to have fun…well…that’s just a REALLY bad idea. ;)

As I said during the discussion on chat I think it is a real interesting thing mainly because the #1 suggested to make it more fair. I´m not in the top 10 and my deck is far from top quality. So I always do 20 trys now and would be later on also. Because of my low quality deck the AAs are still interesting for me now.
So if you want me to join this change I would take part but it is your decision.
Coach

I’m all in for this idea. As actuaryal, I think the best system would be to have a draft. We could decide wich “core players” will stay in each alliance and make a list with everybody else. Then each team leader picks one player from the list, one at a time, until it’s all evenly divided.

I have to say that I totally disagree with this whole draft/merger/collusion idea. It might make the top ten alliances more even and competitive with each other, but it gives a rather large boost to the lower part of the top ten, making it even less likely than it already is that the alliances below have a shot at even cracking the top. I think this should be prevented from being implemented, and that maybe there should even be penalties to those alliances that participate in this. This game should be about competition for ALL, not just the top few alliances.

While a draft would be a good idea, it may be very complicated to implement, especially with people in different time zones. It seems the easiest solution for now would be for GRIM and Pickers to leave around 4 top decks on their teams, and other going to the lower team. Of course a higher number of GRIM/Pickers going to the teams that have less top decks.
Sorry cadmus that this may make it harder for teams to get into the top 10 going forward, but this is something to make AAs more exciting. It can’t be that fun that every time you finish an AA there is a top team waiting to fight you and win 175-0. Feel free to implement something similar for the lower teams, and be happy you will no longer be farmed from the top teams anymore.

ok…trying to understand Cadmus.
you want to penalize me…for making my alliance weaker?
I have a question. how did players join your alliance? were NONE of them in other alliances? because if even one came from a different alliance, you should be penalized for making your alliance stronger. Jus sayin…

My main problem with this is the fact that this is a form of collusion between all the top alliances that, under the guise of “making AA more interesting and competitive”, essentially amounts to a power grab for all ten alliances, ensuring that no matter which alliance players end up “drafted” into, they are almost certainly ensured a top 10 standing. If edgebee wanted to implement “leagues” with certain requirements with AA’s kind of like they do the duel system, and then hold periodic drafts from among those players that qualify in each league, I would be all for it. But until edgebee does this, this seems more like collusion to eliminate the competition from outside the top 10, rather than anything else.
I guess I can’t really do anything that I haven’t already done to prevent this if the powers that be decide not to intervene in this. The AA’s are just my favorite part of CM, and I feel like this kind of violates the spirit of competition by the inclusion of only “elite” alliances.

I am officially making a 180 on my stance. At the beginning of the day I was completely for this, even offering opinions and variances on how we can make this work. At the beginning of the day I saw the well intent and excitement put forth by those backing the idea, including from myself. At the beginning of the day I saw possibility and shared hope with those around me. Now I see a negative one large enough to make me change my opinion. I see good players sucked into something they don’t want to do. I see a higher possibility of top players leaving this folly. I see failure in the way this is being handled. This may or may not be all for naught, but I see this doing irreparable damage to the moral in the top players of the game to quench the excitement of half. I don’t suggest you throw this out the window, work is put in here that I see working. Here is a few suggestions that I want to put forward;
1. Slow Down! There is a lot of ironing out needed if this is going to work, don’t go forward with anything until you know exactly where each and every person is going to go. Allied assaults aren’t going anywhere. You can take your time and do it right.
1. Take this enthusiasm and numbers to the Card Monster boards, to Lama, to Coolade when you see him. There’s quality and quantity here and it may be enough to make a change. Edgebee works within they’re ability but as we’ve seen they don’t turn a completely deaf ear to the players, namely when there’s such numbers all calling the same thing.
1. Make sure you’re not losing anyone if you go through with this, I think you’ll be surprised if you hastily go through with this, just how many people won’t be involved in a month.
Anyway, this is just what I’m seeing from the outside looking in.

I slept on it and, after giving it some thought, I must agree with Stache. I’m not a “core” player for any alliance, so maybe that’s why I got excited about the idea. But many people don’t want to be dragged into this, especially after putting so much work into forming their current groups.
If top players are really keen on doing this, I’d suggest a mix of actuaryal’s “balance only the top and bottom, leave the middle” and Stache’s “slow down”: those top players just voluntarily swap themselves to lower alliances by common agreement of both teams, if they think it’ll be more balanced. Just as an example: MP swaps BaS and Kevin with Roadhouse, not needing to involve other alliances.

As a member of Roadhouse, I would just like to point out that we are not full and never have been. We have a daily participation level of between 6 – 9 players.
Secondly, we are a much younger alliance than the rest of you guys and have not had the extra months of farming for rating that the rest of the top 10 have. We are a long way from the magic 500 rating that we are striving for. If we were to prematurely participate in this ‘fight the top 10 only’ idea we would be giving up our goal and the chance of getting to a 500 rating.
I am not trying to shoot holes in the idea and I know that farming lower alliances is quite boring, I am just trying to give the perspective of an alliance that still has goals to reach in the game. Goals that most of you guys have already reached or are close to reaching through your extra months of farming.

So it sounds like the best idea is for the powerful and bored top two alliance players to find lower alliances and players to swap with. As long all players involved are on board it will work. This way we are not forcing anyone to change alliances if they don’t want to. Right now the ranked 3-6 alliances are pretty close in power, so just a few of these swaps would even it out.

Well if it is simplified like that then four superdecks from #1 and #2 could leave and two go to each alliance #7 – 10. But is this going to result in the same balance you were looking for? The only way for true balance is to break everyone up and do a draft properly and I don’t see full agreement for that to happen.
Salem, the new AA system is going to change farming to lower alliances. a win will give you a flat 5 points so you will level faster. The current system requires you to flank an ally for the maximum of 6 points. now you should be able to get 5 points without full participation as long as you win. For Roadhouse to get to 500 rating you will need another month of wins. With the new AA system 500 rating might not have the same perks as it does now. Things are going to get changed a bit from what I have seen in the tester.
Lets wait til Friday, check out the new AA system for a week. and revisit it. Roadhouse will be halfway to their 500 rating by then.

Yeah, I have been watching the evolution of the new AA style and just had another play with it.
I don’t fully understand it, hard in the super sped up test world, but as far as I an see it is based more on attack vs defense rather than keep fighting the same player over and over style we have now.
It will definitely be interesting to see it in a full 24 hour, more than one player participating version. I am sure it will make more sense to me then :-D